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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Obama's overall approval rating is similar to that of Bill Clinton's (43 percent) and Ronald Reagan's (46 percent) about a year before their presidential elections when they won re-election.
Conversely, George H.W. Bush had a 70 percent approval rating about a year before the presidential election but then lost his bid for re-election.
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.
Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.
To hear Republicans tell it, they are waging a virtuous campaign to crack down on rampant voter fraud – a curious position for a party that managed to seize control of the White House in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote.
According to the GOP, community organizers like ACORN were actively recruiting armies of fake voters to misrepresent themselves at the polls and cast illegal ballots for the Democrats.
A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop.
Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud.
The real problem in American elections is not the myth of voter fraud, but how few people actually participate.
Even in 2008, which saw the highest voter turnout in four decades, fewer than two-thirds of eligible voters went to the polls.
According to a study by MIT, 9 million voters were denied an opportunity to cast ballots that year because of problems with their voter registration (13 percent), long lines at the polls (11 percent), uncertainty about the location of their polling place (nine percent) or lack of proper ID (seven percent).
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20107584-503544.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830
Conversely, George H.W. Bush had a 70 percent approval rating about a year before the presidential election but then lost his bid for re-election.
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.
Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.
To hear Republicans tell it, they are waging a virtuous campaign to crack down on rampant voter fraud – a curious position for a party that managed to seize control of the White House in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote.
According to the GOP, community organizers like ACORN were actively recruiting armies of fake voters to misrepresent themselves at the polls and cast illegal ballots for the Democrats.
A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop.
Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud.
The real problem in American elections is not the myth of voter fraud, but how few people actually participate.
Even in 2008, which saw the highest voter turnout in four decades, fewer than two-thirds of eligible voters went to the polls.
According to a study by MIT, 9 million voters were denied an opportunity to cast ballots that year because of problems with their voter registration (13 percent), long lines at the polls (11 percent), uncertainty about the location of their polling place (nine percent) or lack of proper ID (seven percent).
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20107584-503544.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830